


Early Night

by Fallen_Ark_Angel



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27076582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallen_Ark_Angel/pseuds/Fallen_Ark_Angel
Summary: Mirajane does Laxus' makeup. He edges closer to some realizations. They both enjoy themselves.
Relationships: Laxus Dreyar/Mirajane Strauss
Kudos: 15





	Early Night

It was one of those stagnant kind of days where not much was going on and the bar was all but dead. Mirajane enjoyed those days, as she did most, for specific reasons dealing with the less stress load and not as much risk of injury do to a bar brawl, but overall, it made for a rather boring day.

When Laxus happened into the hall, she did perk up some, as she often did at the sight of her occasional date, but when he approached the bar with something of a question on his tongue, she knew she was about to have the misfortune of turning him down.

"I'm sorry, dragon," she remarked before he could even make his offer, standing where she had behind the bar, wiping it down with a cool rag, "but I have to work today. And tomorrow. And the day after, actually-"

"Mirajane," Kinana quickly butted in. She was rare to do this, especially when the woman was having a rather private conversation, but the bar was so empty that day that she heard her across the room and rushed right over. Serving tray under one arm, she stood before the bar and off to the side of Laxus as she insisted to her mentor of sorts, "I can handle everything here today. You more than deserve a day off."

"What? No." The older woman frowned. "I don't want to leave you here all by yourself. Just so Laxus and I could go on a date?"

"I haven't," Laxus spoke up then, perhaps with a bit of a grumble as he glanced back and forth at the women before him, "asked you for a date, you know."

"O-Oh." She beamed though, Mirajane did, up at the man as she remarked, "Did you not get to that part yet?"

"No," he replied though, just as quickly, he was shrugging some as he said, "But I was going to ask if-"

"Go, Mira." Kinana seemed rather insisted. "Everything will be fine here. Promise."

"Well," the other woman sighed as she mulled it all over. "If you insist-"

"I really do."

"Then-"

"I still," Laxus complained in his monotone way, "haven't asked to even take you out, you know."

"Oh, dragon, then go ahead and ask," Mirajane suggested with a bit of a giggle, as if he were the dense one.

Someone in the bar was calling out for a refill then and Kinana turned on her heel to take care of this issue, leaving the pair alone. As Mirajane stared up into his dark eyes though, Laxus only snorted.

"If you must know," he began as she quickly moved to untie her apron and toss down the rag in her hand, "I actually just wanted you to come by my place tonight after work."

"Your place?"

"No hard plan," he assured her. "To just...be together."

This took the woman aback for a moment and she only studied the man with a bit of surprise. While the two had found themselves quite the unlikely pair as of late, it was a rather wholesome attempt at courtship that they seemed to be drifting through. Mirajane was very aware that the man was frequently absent and that getting entangled with him would entail long stretches of uncertainty. Laxus, by the same token, knew that the woman had a slew of interested parties and entertained a few. Between the two of them, Mirajane and Laxus were equally aware of the others romantic inclinations, but still seemed to find one another, at least once or twice, when Laxus was in town for more than a few days.

"He's a fun date," Mirajane offered frequently to the uncertainty of any questioner and though the slayer wasn't one to be questioned, he would grunt a bit, when the Thunder Legion felt so bold, and shrug his shoulders.

"She's Mirajane fucking Strauss," he explained quite simply and, well, though it did fluster Evergreen and make Freed sigh deeply, Bickslow would always give him a big thumbs up, which had to count for something.

They liked one another.

A lot, at times.

Less at others.

But it felt good for each of them, maybe, to have the other to fall back on. Laxus seemed to come around only when Mirajane most need him while she was always there, in the guild, where she belonged, certainly not waiting on him, but if he closed his eyes tight enough, blocked out reality well enough, well, then it was almost as if she were.

Still, it was a bit strange, maybe, for there to be no big plan behind their time spent together. Mirajane always had a ball or event she was just dying to take him to or Laxus would want a woman to accompany him to a new bar or restaurant.

While they certainly spent a lot of time together in the interim, it was never with the express intention. They found one another to be good company, and it was more than welcome, but it was a bit strange, maybe, for Laxus to seek her out solely for it and while he kept mostly quiet, Mirajane found herself with some subtle glee.

She'd been to the man's apartment before, of course, and even had stayed the night quite a few times. But this felt different as they weren't stumbling into the place inebriated and hot, but rather sober and slightly chilled by the autumn air. Laxus dropped his coat on the rack before turning to take Mira's as well, his eyes not clouded by lust for once, but rather, maybe...a bit of nerves?

Mirajane found this hard to accept.

"I have some steaks in the fridge that I was saving for guys night, with Freed and Bickslow, but I can get some more," he told the woman as he walked further through the apartment. "Or I can go out later and get us some takeout, if you want. But for now," and he paused some, as he'd made it to his kitchen, heading right over to sling open the fridge, "let's have a drink."

Mirajane tried to decline, crinkling her nose a bit at the sight of the beer bottle he presented her with, but the man merely popped the cap on one with his rather impressive canine before walking over to the counter top and nodding at where a bottle of wine sat, corked.

And she couldn't rightly deny the offer, given it was surely her favorite label, and they fell together, eventually, into his couch, a music lacrima playing distantly in the background.

"So," Mirajane began around the one glass she insisted she was having, "was there anything in particular you wanted to do?"

"No," Laxus answered honestly enough. After a sip of his drink, he added, "Just to be with you."

It felt like the final confirmation she needed and that time, when the woman giggled, it felt real and Laxus felt the tips of his ears heat up, maybe just a bit, laughing himself at his own admission. Everything felt easier now and, for all the talking Mirajane typically required, Laxus was glad to find that this was now not the case.

He'd never brought a woman back to his place just to sit around. Honestly, maybe that wasn't even his true intention. He'd felt like the sex was implied, maybe, and did hope the night would turn that way originally (fine, even still), but fuck it wasn't a strange comfort to just exist then, beside the demon. Nothing more, nothing less. Just sit beside her and silently consider all of the things that to say aloud would ruin their own existence.

"Was there anything you wanted to do?" he asked when her cup was running low and he was already starting on his second beer. "Mirajane?"

"Well," she began with a bit of a sigh, "I dunno."

"What do you usually do?" he tried instead. "When you get an unexpected time off?"

"Last time I did," she told him truthfully, "I reorganized my kitchen cabinets."

Laxus considered this in silent for a moment before saying, "I only have a couple plates, cups, and bowls in mine. They only take up one cabinet. But you can have at it if you-"

"No way." She frowned. "How do you live like that?"

"Like a single person," he answered simply and, well, that made sense, maybe.

Humming still, Mirajane told him, "It sounds like someone needs a cookware set for their birthday."

"It sounds like someone's not finding out when that is then," he retorted bluntly before insisting, "Come on, Mira. There has to be something that you wanna do, right now. Something more than just sit and drink."

His question felt a bit leading and she might have taken it as such if his tone wasn't rather open while his gaze uncharacteristically seemed much the same. Laxus was honestly wishing for her to present the two of them something fun to do around his apartment and though, as her eyes scanned about, it was instead something the man didn't possess that she found herself suggesting.

"I have always wanted to do your makeup."

Laxus was mid sip and choked a bit, maybe, as he questioned, "My what?"

"Oh c'mon, dragon," she insisted in that pouty face of hers that she saved just for when he was being a sourpuss. "Don't tell me you've wanted to enhance your looks a bit."

"My face was chiseled by the gods," the man told her simply. "I don't need stupid makeup to make myself look better when I'm already the most handsome thing to ever grace this planet."

"Awe, you're a little handsome boy, huh?"

"Mirajane-"

"And hey, Lax," she griped a bit then, "what are you saying anyways? You don't need anything to enhance your look, but I do?"

"Did I say that?"

"That...that's what I'm asking," she replied. "Did you?"

He eyed her then, Laxus did, weighing his options before saying, "No."

"No you're not saying that? Or no you're-"

"You wear it because you like the way it makes you look," he told her then, angling his bottle towards her before pointing it back to his own chest. "I already like the way I look. A lot. So you should probably check yourself, demon, more than me."

She finished her drink then, Mira did, down to the last drop, before informing the man, "You're letting me do your makeup, Laxus. You owe it to me after that last remark."

The man got up then, to get another beer it seemed, and he stood with the fridge door open for a few moments before snagging one. As he pulled out from his mostly barren fridge, it was with some thought as to what he wanted, anyways, when he'd invited the woman over. While the obvious implication was true, there was more to it as well.

He liked Mira's company. And the antics that they could get up to together. Going out somewhere with her was never boring and he'd hoped that this would carryover into their time spent inside his apartment. She so frequently did the heavy lifting on the side of entertaining actions or engaging conversation that, for once, he knew it would only be fair if he played along.

"Fine." He came back into the room with half the new beer already drowned. As Mirajane, who'd honestly not considered him as truly giving in so easily, blinked up at the man in surprise, he conditioned, "But it doesn't leave this apartment."

While it wasn't her main forte, Mirajane did seem to dabble a bit in Titania's reequip territory. He'd seen the woman summon many things from her own reequip space, from her musical equipment to a purse, but that night she brought forth a modest makeup bag.

"Now Laxus," she began as they sat together, cross-legged on his bed, the man weary and his date with a wide grin, "I know that you probably too well versed in the beauty world-"

"Safe assumption," he grumbled as the woman merely giggled.

"Well," she continued with a shrug, "it's just that I've actually thought about doing this a lot."

"This?"

"Your makeup."

"Excuse me?"

"You have such good cheek bones," she insisted, stopping her rifling and pulling from her makeup bag and instead reaching to to ghost some fingers over the man's cheek. "And you could cut a steak with your jawline."

"I'm really close to kicking you out."

"It's a complement," the woman insisted, but he only rolled his eyes before downing the rest of the bottle and tossing it haphazardly towards the mini-trashcan in the corner of his room. As he missed (rather badly), Mirajane only made a face and hummed some, continuing, "And your eyes are just so-"

"Can you do something for me?"

"If you ask me to shut up, Lax," she warned simply, "then I'm going to leave."

But the man only stared at her blankly as he said, "Can you make make my scar go away?"

"W-What?"

"My scar." And he reached up then to tap at his most recognizable feature. "Can you hide them?"

"W-Well, I mean, I guess I can, Lax. Under concealer. But-"

"You can do whatever else you want," he assured her then. "I just want you to hide it as well."

There seemed to be an awkwardness about them now, as Mirajane busied herself with pulling her essentials from her bag and Laxus merely waited.

He'd never had someone so interested in his face before and it almost made him blush, just a bit, when the woman leaned over to begin her work. It was strange, to say the least, to only sit silently as the woman did her magic. He did as she said, even when she ordered him softly not to be so tense, trying to be the perfect dummy, and it was….

Weird, so fucking weird, but also calming, just being with the woman.

He felt like her energy meshed with hers perfectly. Yes, they both had something they'd buried, in their past, that could still come out at times, but over all, they both spent their free time decompressing and, occasionally, lamenting over shared experiences. He knew the facade that she put on up at the guildhall had to get tiring at times, to parade, and she was accepting of when his guard slipped a bit and the snarky, rugged side of made a short-lived escape.

They were good together.

Laxus wasn't anywhere near ready to say that they would always be that way, that there wasn't another woman that could see himself being even better with, but he'd begun to edge more into begin the confirmation phase, with the one before him, and maybe leaving all the others behind.

Maybe.

But he didn't want to have that conversation that night, didn't really want to think of it at all, but he did note how pretty Mirajane's eyes looked, when she was so focused in on a task and how it most tickled, just a bit, when the gentle brushstrokes graced the very tip of his nose.

It felt like it went on forever but when it was over, both knowing for separate reasons that the man, more than likely, would never again allow this, it felt like it hadn't gone on long enough. Mirajane smiled at him though, insisting that he go take a look in his mirror.

"How," she complained when she glanced around his bedroom for one, anticipating at least one on the back of a door, over his dresser, or even a floor length one, but coming up dry, "do you not have a single mirror in here?"

She anticipated some sort of crack over his own perfection, but the man only tumbled back out of bed, trying not to seem too eager as he headed to his bathroom.

"Well?" Mirajane insisted as she followed. "What do you think?"

Laxus had come to stand before the mirror above his sink, blinking some as Mirajane looked at the reflection as well. Under the harsh bathroom light, she found she didn't like it as much as she had before, in the cozy lighting of his room.

"It's not my best work," she chided a bit. "But-"

"Can I touch it?"

"I mean...it's not paint, Lax, but don't like smear it around or-"

"It's just weird," he told her softly, or maybe not. Maybe he wasn't speaking to her at all. The woman couldn't be too certain. As he brought a finger up to ghost over where, typically, the zigzag of a scar lay across his eye, he only added, "It's always been there. Since...since Ivan..."

Glancing away from his reflection then and instead at the actual man, she only insisted to him truthfully, "I like you better with it, personally."

"You do?"

Mirajane nodded when he turned to face her. "It's a part of you. And I'm attracted to you. So of course I like it. There's not anything in you that I want to change."

She blushed some, Mira did, at this admission, but he felt like her bashfulness was put on, maybe, just a bit. Still, he allowed himself to smile in return before turning to look back at his reflection.

"Now," he questioned, "how do I get it off?"

"Dragon," she complained. "I just put it on. Why would you want to take it off already?"

"Because I let you have your fun-"

"You enjoyed it too." Still though, with a groan, she pulled her bag from her reequip space once more, the object appearing in her palm. Pulling out some cotton pads and a bottle of some sort of liquid, she only said, "Lean down?"

"I can't just take a fucking shower?"

"If you want it all off," she remarked as, regardless of his complaints, the man still complied, always, "then this is just easier."

"You do this every night?" he asked her softly as the woman, after wetting the cotton pads, began to run the cool liquid across his face. "Demon?"

"I have a whole regimen."

"A what?"

"What do you think women do in the bathroom exactly? Before bed?"

"I mean...I'm usually shitting."

She crinkled her nose at the man before replying simply, "You have to take care of your skin, Lax. I've actually been meaning to talk to you about it. If you want to age gracefully-"

"I'm not going to age."

"-then you need to start taking care of your skin," she went on. "I didn't want to be presumptuous, but if you want me to buy you a kit-"

"I really don't."

"It's something to think about," was her final warning before, finished, she took a step back and the man was himself again, blinking into the twinkling eyes of the demon.

"You mentioned," she asked after a beat passed, "steak earlier? Didn't you?"

The night was far from over, it had only really just began, but after some time in the kitchen together, shifting through the searing of meat and chopping of vegetables, to the eating and light flirting, and eventually the finale where they lightly argued over who would wash and who would dry, the early evening came to an equally early end.

It was nice, when they fell into the bed together this time, but Laxus found himself equally as drawn to when they climbed back out of it, Mirajane giggling some when they stumbled back into the bathroom once more, this time headed for the shower. He liked the feeling of her, anyways, just as he had the whole night, but in a different way now as the water cascaded down and her bangs fell, wet and sticking to her forehead, over her deep blue eyes.

"Laxus?" she asked only once the sun had truly fallen beneath the horizon and it was a more acceptable hour, maybe, for sleep and they found themselves in his bed for the third, final time of the night.

He made some sort of sigh, a grunt maybe, in reply as he lay on his side, facing her and playing along, absently, as the woman toyed with his fingers, tired, but not wanting to let the moment slip away just yet. The dragon was sympathetic as, of course, he knew the feeling.

"I'm glad we could be together today." And her fingers escaped his, reaching out instead to gently press into his forehead, following perfectly the jagged line his scar left in his flesh, ghosting over his eye lid and finishing with a sharp poke into his cheek. "Tonight."

He shrugged, losing the fight with his need to be indifferent as he offered rather dryly, "We have fun together."

But Mirajane only smiled, forgiving in this as her hand fell to the mattress and, quickly, his larger one moved to cover it.

"Yeah," she agreed softly. "We do."


End file.
